Chapter 4 - The Confession
The atmosphere in the grand foyer felt like a courtroom where the sentence had already been decided, and all that remained was the execution of justice.
Luca led his mother carefully to one of the velvet armchairs near the grand fireplace. He knelt beside her, signaling one of the house maids to bring a warm blanket and a glass of water.
Then, he stood up, turning his full, devastating attention toward Vanessa Bellini.
The twenty-eight guests had backed up against the far walls, completely silent. Nobody dared to check their phones; nobody dared to speak. The dangerous reputation of the Moretti family was well known in Chicago, but few had ever witnessed Luca Moretti operating in his full, unbridled fury.
Vanessa stood near the entrance to the dining room, her back pressed against a mahogany pillar. Her composure was completely shattered, her manicured nails digging into the wood behind her.
"Luca, please," Vanessa tried again, her voice high and desperate now. "Listen to me! I was doing this for us! For our future!"
"Our future?" Luca asked, walking toward her with slow, measured steps. "By drugging my mother? By hiring mercenaries to kidnap her from her own home?"
"She has dementia, Luca!" Vanessa shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at Eleanor. "Look at her! She's old, she's senile, she imagines things! She's been dragging down your reputation for years! How can you run a multi-billion-dollar empire when you're constantly running home to check if your crazy mother ate her soup?!"
"My mind is clearer than yours, you deceitful little snake," Eleanor said coldly from her chair, sipping her water. "I don't have dementia, Vanessa. But I do have the journal I kept hidden under my mattress—the one where I wrote down every date and time you entered my room with those unlabelled blue pills."
Vanessa’s eyes went wide as saucers.
"I didn't take them," Eleanor added softly, looking at her son. "Every night she forced me to swallow one, I kept the pill under my tongue until she left the room, then spat it into my handkerchief. I have twenty-two of them hidden in my vanity drawer right now, Luca."
Luca stopped three feet from Vanessa. His face was a mask of stone, but the dark veins on his neck were bulging.
"Why?" Luca asked softly. "I gave you everything, Vanessa. A ten-million-dollar estate budget. An engagement ring worth half a million. Access to my social network. Why touch my mother?"
Vanessa let out a bitter, jagged laugh, all pretense of elegance evaporating into thin air.
"Because you were never going to marry me!" she spat, her dark eyes flashing with pure hatred. "You were never going to give me power of attorney! Your mother controls forty percent of the Moretti Logistics shares through your father's trust! As long as she is alive and sane, I am just a decoration in this house!"
"So you made a deal," a quiet voice spoke up from the stairs.
It was me.
I was leaning against the marble railing, holding a clean towel against my bleeding arm that one of the younger maids had brought me.
Everyone turned to look at me.
"She made a deal with the Bellini family," I said, looking straight at Vanessa. "The rival shipping firm in Detroit. Mrs. Moretti told me... she heard Vanessa talking to her uncle on the phone. Once Eleanor was declared mentally incompetent and moved to a private facility, Vanessa’s uncle was going to buy out her forty percent trust shares at a fraction of their value."
Luca didn't look away from Vanessa. "Is that true?"
Vanessa didn't answer. She didn't need to. Her silent, panicked breathing gave her away completely.
"You sold my family out to Detroit," Luca whispered.
"They were going to give me fifty million dollars!" Vanessa screamed, completely breaking down, tears ruining her heavy eye makeup. "Fifty million! Clean money! Free from your blood-stained empire! I was trapped here, Luca! Trapped playing the dutiful housewife while you spent eighteen hours a day running your goddamn syndicate!"
Luca looked at her for a long, silent moment. The rage in his eyes seemed to settle into a cold, absolute disgust.
"You were never trapped, Vanessa," Luca said quietly. "You could have walked out that door at any time with a check for ten million dollars and never looked back. But you wanted everything. You wanted my family's legacy, and you were willing to destroy my mother to get it."
He turned his back on her, dismissing her as if she no longer existed.
"Marco."
"Yes, boss?"
"Take Miss Bellini upstairs to her room," Luca ordered calmly. "Remove her phone, her jewelry, and her passport. Keep two guards outside her door. She stays there until the federal authorities and my legal team arrive in the morning to file formal charges for attempted extortion, poisoning, and kidnapping."
"No! Luca, you can't do this to me!" Vanessa shrieked as two heavy security guards stepped forward, grabbing her arms firmly. "I am a Bellini! You can't treat me like a criminal!"
"You're not a Bellini anymore," Eleanor said softly from her chair. "You're just a prisoner in my house."
Vanessa kicked and screamed, her red gown dragging along the floor as the guards hauled her away toward the private elevator. Her shrill cries echoed down the corridor until the heavy oak doors slammed shut, cutting her off completely.
The foyer fell silent once more.
Luca turned around to face his twenty-eight high-society guests. He straightened his dark jacket, his expression completely calm.
"I apologize for the disruption to your evening, ladies and gentlemen," Luca said smoothly, his quiet authority returning instantly. "My staff will escort you all safely to your vehicles outside. Have a good night."
The guests didn't say a word. They nodded frantically, moving toward the front doors as Marco’s men opened them, eager to escape the dangerous house before anything else happened.
Within five minutes, the grand foyer was empty of guests.
Only Luca, his mother, and I remained standing beneath the crystal chandelier.
Luca turned toward me. The coldness in his face melted away entirely, replaced by an intense, overwhelming concern as his eyes fell on my blood-stained sleeve.
"Sophie," he said, walking straight toward me. "Come here."
Before I could answer, my head spun violently. The blood loss, the adrenaline crash, and the pain in my arm finally caught up to me all at once.
My knees buckled.
I felt myself falling toward the hard white marble.
But I didn't hit the stone.
Two strong, warm arms caught me before I landed. Luca swept me up into his arms effortlessly, lifting my small frame against his broad chest as if I weighed nothing at all.
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"I've got you," his voice rumbled right beside my ear, warm and steady. "I've got you, Sophie. You're safe."
The last thing I saw before blackness swallowed my vision was the silver pendant around his neck and the frantic, worried look in those storm-gray eyes.
